Amelia Pond and the Days that Never Came
by Raibean
Summary: We're all just stories in the end, and the Doctor has been reduced to a story in Amelia Pond's mind - but what sort of story is it?
1. Chapter 1 Prologue

**A/N: I'm American, so I'm going to be using American spelling, but I don't want to use American vocabulary. If you're British (especially Scottish!) and I say something that doesn't make sense (suspenders instead of braces, mom instead of mum), **_**please**_** correct me in a review! Also, if a pun doesn't make sense because a British person wouldn't use the same vowel sounds.**

Amelia Pond and the Days that Never Came

**Prologue **

Amelia doesn't know why she's in the garden anymore. She's been waiting for so long, and she swears that a minute ago she knew... knew she was waiting for someone... but now she doesn't. She almost gets up to leave, but something keeps her there, something important. If only she could remember what it was! She's waiting for a person, she just knows it. But whom?

She waits and waits, staring at the broken shed in front of her, trying to remember how it broke. She lies down on her suitcase, wondering why she came outside in the first place. When she falls asleep, she can't even remember the crack in her wall.

"... and you won't even remember me. Well," the voice paused, "you'll remember me a little. I'll be a story in your head. That's okay. We're all stories in the end. Just make it a good one, eh? 'Cause it was, you know? It was _the best._ A daft old man who stole a magic box and ran away." That last part is whispered, like the man is tired, so tired of it all. "Did I ever tell you that I stole it? Well, I borrowed it; I was always gonna take it back. Oh, that box. Amy, you'll dream about that box. It'll never leave you. _Big_ and _little_ at the same time. Brand new and ancient, and the _bluest_ blue ever. And the times we had, eh? Would've had. Never had." He sounds heart-broken. "In your dreams, they'll still be there." He laughs a little, but it's almost like crying. "The Doctor and Amy Pond... and the days that never came."


	2. Chapter 2 Stowaway

Amelia Pond and the Days that Never Came

**Stowaway**

"Jake, you said you would play with me," Amelia says sternly, arms crossed.

"All you want to do is play house."

"No," she retorted. "Not today. I got a better game today."

"You promise?" His brown eyes are hopeful.

"Yes, I promise. You can be the Doctor."

"We're gonna play doctor? We can't; last time I was playin' doctor, me mum grounded me for a week!" He gives her a grimace.

"Not that kind o' doctor, Jake!" She huffs at his obliviousness. "He's not a hospital doctor. He's a raggedy doctor."

"What's he do, then? What's he a doctor of?" Jake scratches at his brunette locks.

"He's a doctor of everything. He travels out there." Amelia points to to the sky. "In space."

"There's nothin' out there, Amelia, that's why it's called _space_. The only thing is the sun."

Amelia looks up at it. Was the sun always so big? "There's stars, remember?"

For a second, Jake looks like he's forgotten what stars even are. Then everything's back to normal, and he nods. "Yeah, but stars aren't anythin', are they?"

"They're _somethin',_ or we wouldn't see 'em!" Amelia tilts her head. "What if each star's a country? I bet there's a star called Spain. That'd be nice. A Spanish star." _Barcelona._

"So that's what he does? Travels from star to star?" He's back in the game.

"Yes."

"So I'm the Doctor?" He grins, flashing his teeth. He's missing the front two.

"Yes!"

"Who're you?" Jake asks.

"I'm me!" Amelia rolls her eyes. Boys can be so daft.

"You can't be you! That's cheatin'!" Now Jake's the one crossing his arms. "At least pick a new name."

"River! River Song." She ponders this. "And I'm a professor!"

"A professor?"

"You know, a teacher. A boffin, yeah? I learn stuff about the star-countries we go to." Amelia picks up a stick to be her pen.

"How do we get there? To the stars? A spaceship, right? A big pirate one -"

"No no no, Jake, we use a TARDIS."

His face falls. "What's that?"

"Time and... Time and... It's a big blue box! Like a phone box! And it's bigger on the inside!"

"Does it have a pirate flag?" Jake pleads.

"No, Jake, it doesn't have a pirate flag." Her face sets into a pout. He matches it.

"I want a pirate flag!"

"No!"

"Yes!"

"It's stupid!"

"I want a pirate flag! Not your stupid box! It would be cool to sail the stars in a big pirate ship-"

"You're messin' it up!" she screams. The she slugs Jake as hard as she can. She knows she's done something wrong immediately because Jake's eyes go red, and he starts hiccuping. That's when Jake throws a tantrum.

Amelia's in big, big trouble now. She runs from the park all the way home, where she hides in her room. She pulls out her arts and crafts supplies, grabbing paper and felt-tip pens (pens, Amelia thinks, color way better than crayons). She draws the box, but it doesn't come out right because she can't remember the words, and her hand keeps shaking from anger. Stupid Jake. Who puts a pirate flag on a TARDIS? It wouldn't even look cool. _Bow-tie._ The Doctor wears a bow-tie, she just knows it. A red one. Braces, too, the strappy burgundy ones that match the tie. A watch, too, only he puts its face on the inside of his wrist, not the outside. On his left hand. Is he left-handed? No, 'cause he holds the stick – screwdriver? yeah, screwdriver – in his right.

She's not so good at drawing, so she draws him and the box again and again and again until her mum comes upstairs.

"Amelia..." It's that dangerous voice mums use when they get mad.

"What?" She tries to sound innocent, but she's too angry about Jake and her inability to draw the raggedy doctor.

"Mrs. Malone says you hit Jake." Her mum's leaning against the door.

"Did not. Jake's a liar. And he's stupid, too." She draws the Doctor's bow-tie, but it's too big.

"I know you're still angry. Did Jake do something to make you mad?"

"He wouldn't play the game right." She draws the braces, two sticks running down his shirt.

"So you hit him?"

"Did not!"

"Amelia."

"He never plays right, Mum! He's selfish!" Amelia throws her marker across the room.

"Amelia, you're being violent. I know you're having trouble with the move, darling, but you need to play nice. You have to follow the rules, love."

"The rules are stupid!"

"Your father and I were talking, and we think you're under a lot of stress right now. We thought it would be nice if we took you to see someone."

"What d'you mean?" Amelia crumples up the drawing.

"You know, a nice adult to help you see how things are coming along... A psychiatrist."

Amelia frowns. "I don't want to talk to anyone."

"Not today, maybe next week."

"Whatever, mum." She just wants her to go away.

"Okay, sweetheart." She walks up to Amelia to kiss her on the forehead. When she leaves, Amelia grabs her sketchpad, a pencil, and a ruler. She draws boxes, then stick figures. Then she writes a story.

"_Come along, Pond," the Doctor says. _

"_Doctor," Amy answers, "where are we?"_

"_Barcelona. The planet, not the city. Lovely place. Always safe, always nice." He casts her a smile._

"But then they see a man stealing a lady's purse," Amelia mutters.

_It's a child, an orphan, and he reaches out to grab the old woman's bag. The Doctor grabs his hand and puts a finger to his lips._

"_Now, now, that's not right," the Doctor says._

"_What d'you need with money, anyways?" Amy asks. She's very tall, and she bends over, hands on her knees, so that she's eye-level with him._

"_Food, I just want food."_

"_And you need money for that." The Doctor smiles. "Don't worry; we'll get you all the food you need." They walk off to buy him anything and everything with digital money the Doctor uses his screwdriver to get._

_In a street corner, a cloaked woman watches. She looks around before she changes shapes to look like the boy. She follows them._

"And she gets into the space ship with them, the TARDIS." Amelia sucks on her pencil. "Only they don't see her because she's a shadow."

_Outside the TARDIS is the vortex, and it takes the TARDIS anytime, anywhere. It holds everything, every possibility and every impossibility all at once. If Amy looks at it, she will go completely mad, and the cloaked woman knows this. The bad thing is, Amy doesn't._

_The cloaked woman, poor and hungry, watches the Doctor pilot the TARDIS. She watches it take them to a beach on the other side of Barcelona, a century earlier. Amy doesn't pilot the blue space ship. Amy is the best one to impersonate. All the woman has to do is open the doors of the blue box, shove Amy out – poor, mad Amy, who could land anywhere or nowhere in all of time and space – and impersonate her._

_She cuts a wire below the deck of the TARDIS, and once the Doctor goes below, the woman opens the door. Amy shields her eyes from the bright colors flooding in, and that's when she hears a scream. The cloaked woman has looked into the vortex, and it's utterly frightening. She morphs again and again and again into everyone she has ever seen, and Amy is inching towards her, eyes cast on the ground so they don't hurt._

"Then I grab the woman's cloak!" Amelia says, drawing the stick figure with wind blowing the square on her shoulders away from the TARDIS's door. "But she falls into the vortex, never to be seen again!"

_Amy still has the cloak, and the Doctor rushes up._

"_Amy, what happened; what are you doing; who was just screaming?"_

"_There – there was a woman; I think she was a woman. She kept changing. She opened the TARDIS doors, and it was so bright, Doctor-"_

"_Did you look?"_

"_No, no. She did, though. Then she fell out. I grabbed her cloak. Once she was out, she stopped changing, but we were going so fast... she disappeared."_

"_A stowaway." The Doctor looks back down at the cloak. "This is a shifter's cloak. Popular in Barcelona in the fifty-fourth century, during war-time. Most of them were given up during the war so soldiers could use them. Quite a lot were destroyed. Then the shifters went extinct – or went into hiding; no one really knows. Hard to tell. Wonder what it was doing in the fifty-third century." He pulls out his screwdriver, and it beeps while the Doctor scans the cloak. "Nope, fifty-fourth. Stowaway." He sniffs the cloak. "Better put this in the wardrobe room, then." He leaves while the TARDIS lands. Amy stares at the door, wondering what all those glowing colors look like._


	3. Chapter 3 The Sickness on the Moon

Amelia Pond and the Days that Never Came

**The Sickness on the Moon**

Amelia doesn't like the new boy in her class. He stares at her when she talks, as if his accent's any better. Not that he has an accent, since he's just from here. She hates school already. She doesn't really know anyone who lives by her, just Jake (who hasn't played with her in a week) and his cousin Carly, who's a year older and teases Amelia for being ginger.

It's the first day of school, so the teacher has them all say stuff about themselves. Amelia says she wants to travel the stars when she grows up. Other than that, she doesn't really pay attention except when the new boy talks.

"My name is Rory," he says quietly. "I like to read, and when I grow up, I want to be a doctor."

That catches her attention. Of course he doesn't mean her Doctor; no one does. She goes back to thinking about the Doctor. She wonders what the TARDIS would be like.

There would have to be a huge library. _And a swimming pool! A swimming pool in the library!_ She giggles, and Rory looks over at her. She sticks her tongue out at him because the teacher isn't looking.

At recess, she goes up to him.

"D'you got a problem with me?" She's holding a red ball, so she can throw it at his face if she has to.

"No." He looks embarrassed.

"Then why d'you keep starin' at me?" She purses her lips.

"I like you talk." He gives her a small smile. "It's pretty."

"Oh." She holds out her hand. "D'you wanna play?"

"Play ball?" he asks.

"We can play pretend." She bounces the ball. "You can be the Doctor. I'm Amy Pond. We travel in a blue phone box called the TARDIS, and it takes us through time and space."

"I'm a doctor?" Rory asks.

"No, you're _the_ Doctor. Just 'the Doctor.' No name. You're very smart, and you wear a bow-tie and braces. You know everything."

"Everything?" Rory asks.

"That's what I said!" Amelia bounces the ball on the ground as hard as she can.

"Sorry." Rory catches the ball. "So where do we go if we can go anywhere?"

Amelia bites her lip. "The moon! We're going to the moon."

"Are there sick people there? Since I'm a doctor." Rory hugs the ball against his chest.

"Not that kind of doctor. A doctor of everything."

"Oh. But I could be, right? If I'm a doctor of everything, I'm a doctor for people, too."

Amelia nods. "Yeah! Yeah. There are sick people on the moon, and we've got to help them!"

"_Doctor," Amy asks, "what's wrong with them?"_

_The Doctor pulls out his screwdriver and waves it over a few of them._

"What's the screwdriver do?" Rory asks Amelia.

"It does everything! It can move stuff, and it tells the Doctor stuff when he scans it."

"Oh. Do you have one?" Rory asks.

"No, but I have a cloak! When I wear it, I can look like anyone!" She smiles. "I'm not wearing it this time, though."

"Okay."

"_They're very sick, Amy. It's an alien disease. Makes your fingers turn purple and your hair turn green."_

"That's a stupid disease," Amelia says.

Rory blushes. "Oh."

"How about it turns you into an alien! One with a spaghetti mouth -" Amelia puts the backs of her hand over her mouth and wiggles her fingers so it looks like tentacles are coming out of her face. "They're bald! And they sing! And they have a brain in their hands!"

Rory shudders. "That's gross."

"It's not gross; it's just the way they look. They're called... Ood."

"Odd?"

"No, _Ood_."

"Oh."

"_They're very sick," the Doctor says. "They're turning into Ood."_

"_What do we do, Doctor?"_

"_I'm not sure. I've never seen this before."_

"_Well, the Ood've got to have a weakness, don't they?" Amy asks. "Maybe if we do something to kill the Ood in them, they'll stay human."_

"_Yes, Amy, but what would kill an Ood that wouldn't kill a human?" The Doctor scans them again. "Can't be the IV, they've already got one."_

"What's an IV?" Amelia asks.

"It's this bag of special water," Rory says, "and they stick it to your arm, and it drips vitamins and stuff."

"Oh. You're smart!"

Rory blushes again.

"_Well, Doctor, what have they got on the moon that they haven't got on Earth?"_

"_Or what have they got on Earth that they don't have on the moon?" the Doctor pondered. "Sea water. Flowers. Different stuff dirt."_

"They have to eat dirt!" Amelia shouts. "It has stuff in it that kills the Ood!"

They ran to the fence panel that was serving as their TARDIS.

"How do I fly it?" Rory asks. "This button here?"

"No, no!" Amelia starts shaking the fence and making airplane noises. _That isn't right._

"We're on Earth! Amy, get the dirt!"

Amelia scoops up sand in her chubby hands. "Quick! To the moon!"

They race back to the fence, and this time Rory shakes the fence. He makes the airplane noise, too, but when he does it, it sounds much more accurate to a sound Amelia has only imagined. Rory leads her to the patch of grass that is their sick bay, and Amelia flings the sand over the clovers.

"We saved the day, Doctor!"

In class, Amelia does her best to draw the whole thing out. She likes Rory; he doesn't want a stupid pirate flag on her TARDIS, and he likes playing the Doctor. He likes her accent, too. She decides that Rory is pretty nice; he's just nervous because he's new. When she shows him the comic strip, he asks very nicely if he can keep it.

"Yeah, I guess. I'll make another one when I get home."

"You've got to sign it, though," Rory says. "All artists've got to sign their work."

"Okaaaay." She whispers the letters as she writes them out.

"I thought your name was Amy."

"Amy's short for Amelia." She doesn't know where "Amy" came from, but she likes it.

"Can I call you Amy?" Rory asks.

She likes that idea, so she says yes.

When she goes home, her dad asks her how school was, and she tells them all about Rory and how he played the Raggedy Doctor with her.

"We saved people on the moon, Mum!"

"That's wonderful. I'm so glad you made a friend here." The blonde kisses her daughter on the forehead.

"He likes my drawing, too! He called me an artist."

"I bet that's a chat-up line," he father jokes. Amelia doesn't get it.

"What's that?"

Her mother shoots him a glare.

"Nothin', Amelia, just that he fancies you." He turns back to his potatoes.

"Daaaad, boys have cooties."

"Don't worry, love," her mum pitches in. "You've got your cootie shot already."

That night, Amelia dreams about the Doctor. This is the second time this week. This is the first time that Rory's there, though. Just like her, Rory's an adult in the dream. She just knows it's him, though. They're inside the TARDIS, and it's snowing. They're wearing ponchos. The Doctor's going on about a cold star; something's wrong, and he can't fly the TARDIS.

"Rory," Amelia says, "you look silly big."

"This feels so real," Rory says. "How do we know if this is the dream?"

That, of course, is when she wakes up. She writes down "cold star" so that she can remember to look it up later at the school library.


End file.
